Catholic Business

Goldman Sachs doing God's Work

In an interview with the UK Sunday Times, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, claimed that he is doing God's work.  An article on the AOL DailyFinance site questions this claim.  I was quoted in the latter article, saying,

"The question of whether the CEO of Goldman Sachs is doing God's work is at one level a very complex one," says Dr. Andrew Abela, chairman of the Department of Business & Economics at the Catholic University of America. Abela, who is working on a book, Catechism for Business, says, "The vast size of the bank and its extensive influence on markets and on government policy, means that it is operating at all times in a moral minefield."

Unfortunately the rest of my quote didn't make it in:

"But at another level, the issue is a simple one: If you want to serve God in business then you need to have the intention to do so, and you need to act in ways that serve society. If your intention is instead to make lots of money, and you happen to do some social good along the way, there is not much honor or spiritual benefit there.  Similarly, if you intend to serve God and society, but the kinds of things you do actually harm people (government regulation often falls into this trap) then neither God nor society are served.  You need both the right intention and the right actions."

Finance and ethics...

Pope Benedict, in Caritas in Veritate, wrote: 

What should be avoided is a speculative use of financial resources that yields to the temptation of seeking only short-term profit, without regard for the long-term sustainability of the enterprise, its benefit to the real economy and attention to the advancement, in suitable and appropriate ways, of further economic initiatives in countries in need of development (#40).

Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity, so as not to abuse the sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of savers. Right intention, transparency, and the search for positive results are mutually compatible and must never be detached from one another (#65).

David P. Goldman, in First Things' Spengler blog, writes today:

A close look at the circumstances of the bank bailout of the past year, particularly the government’s decision to pay out AIG’s guarantees of other banks’ subprime derivative at 100 cents on the dollar, might reveal embezzlement on the grand scale. ... [more]

Subsidiarity and Healthcare

Here are two interesting takes on how the principle of subsidiarity should guide us in the current US health care debate.

Dr. Stephen Schneck of the Catholic University of America wrote Subsidiarity 101: A Lesson for the Health Care Debate, and Kansas City, Kansas Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann and Kansas City – St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn issued their pastoral letter Principles of Catholic Social Teaching and Health Care Reform.